After crashing out of the Europa League, Tottenham fans may be relieved that home games will be exclusively played at White Hart Lane again for the rest of the season.

The makeshift home at Wembley is probably not the only reason that Spurs limped out of the Champions League at the first hurdle before limping out of the Europa League, too, but it certainly seems to have spooked the club and its supporters.

This week, Jonnie Gorrie wrote on this very site that Spurs’ Wembley hoodoo was on the verge of becoming a serious problem; it’s not a stretch to think that after so many lethargic performances both fans and players would start to dread coming to a stadium that Tottenham will have to call home for the entirety of next season. That’s on top of the fact that having a curse at stadium normally reserved for finals and semi-finals is perhaps the worst kind of curse imaginable.

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It’s unwise and probably unfair to write off a whole season, but if Wembley is as big a problem as it appears to be right now, next year doesn’t look overly promising for a club whose young and exciting squad should be even better next season. Somehow, the move to the new White Hart Lane stadium looks like it can’t come soon enough.

But what are they going to find when they do get there?

All of the problems associated with moving into a new stadium are well-known. If Spurs need a reminder, though, they’re all readily available in physical form just a few miles to the south east. West Ham’s move to the Olympic Stadium will have presented different challenges than the ones Spurs face, but some of the same ones will still exist.

At Wembley this season, playing in front of a bigger crowd on an unfamiliar pitch isn’t the issue by itself. If it were, Tottenham could never expect to win an away game. The problem lies more in the flatness of the atmosphere, the inability to recreate a homely vibe and the fact that there’s already pressure on the team.

All of these factors could follow them to a new ground, too. Increased capacity at Wembley has seen the extra tickets snapped up by tourists - or at least more casual fans who are more than happy to go and watch Tottenham play in Europe, but who aren’t exactly passionate fans.

These fans will sit next to the regular White Hart Lane crowd, but when you don’t know or feel comfortable around those people you’re sitting next to, it’s certainly not conducive to singing, chanting and creating an atmosphere. Especially not the kind of atmosphere cultivated over decades at an older ground.

The season after next, that will be an issue as well, though the lower capacity than Wembley will lessen the problem to an extent.

If that’s an expected and foreseeable aspect of moving to a new ground, though, Spurs may also be part of a wider problem English football will need to deal with. There is a certain shortsightedness to the way most top English clubs seem keen to increase their commercial revenue either by expanding their stadiums or moving altogether. There is, at least, a debate to be had.

Increasing matchday revenue is a big deal for football clubs. In an era of stupid TV money, revenue from ticket sales and extra fans through the gates matters less than it used to, but if the TV money ever does decrease (and it will surely have to eventually), clubs want to be in a position where it doesn’t hurt them too much. That’s not shortsighted.

But spending money on stadiums which don’t create the same atmosphere is. The Premier League can command so much money because it is watched all over the world - and one of the reasons for its popularity is the passion and the fury of a football game in England’s top flight. Nowhere else in the world does the chanting and the sound that some of the older English grounds manage, but with each new concrete bowl, that charm is eroded.

The new stadiums may look good on TV, but they don’t sound it, and taking the passion out of the game with high costs pricing out the average fan and quiet, soulless stadiums could very well be the death of English football’s financial dominance over the rest of Europe.

That’s not a problem for Spurs - at least, no more than it’s a problem for anyone else - but their games so far at Wembley have shown that a lack of atmosphere is just strange for a football game, contributing partly to their downfall in Europe this season.

And if the players can’t perform when the atmosphere is off, why would anyone around the world tune in?

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